Delegation in action
Delegating important tasks is never easy.One of the most challenging aspectsByford has faced is when it comes to hiringmanagers, especially if it is a hire two levelsdown from him in the organization. Theprocess he uses is a good example of howyou have to set up a system you can believein and live with the results it generates.
“When the group consensus, and particularly perhaps led by the hiring manager, isfor candidate A and my personal feelingmight be that I have a preference for candidate B, that’s a tough one to step back from,”he says. “But, I think if you’re going toexpect that manager to manage the individual, then you better let them make the decision unless you have a really strong rationale to put forward to say that, ‘I don’t thinkyou are making the right decision here.’”
Byford created a system that has numerous people involved within the organization who have a say on who is hired.
When hiring to fill a manager position, thecompany’s interview process includes thatpotential employee’s direct manager andsecond-level manager, employees who willbe reporting to the candidate and perhaps ahigher-level manager, if warranted.
There is first a telephone-screening interview, then there’s usually a one-on-onescreening interview with the hiring manager.
Once it’s down to two or three finalists, thefirst part of what’s usually a full-day interview for any management-level position atthe company is a presentation by the candidate to the entire interview group, whichcould range from a handful to as many as 15or so people on some occasions.
“We ask the candidate in 30 minutes towalk through their resume,” he says. “Notjust to give us the facts but to tell us particularly what they found about organizationswhen they entered it, what they learnedwhile they were and what, with the benefitof hindsight, they’d do differently if they hada chance to do it over again?
“That process does a number of things. Itobviously saves us some time b
ec
ause a lotof the background information gets out atonce rather than having the same questions being asked over and over again during the course of a day’s interviewing. It’salso quite revealing about how good candidates are, first, in front of a group; second,in being a bit introspective about beingwilling to look back and evaluate their ownperformance.”
After the presentation, there is a mix ofone-on-one and either pair or team interviews. The group, ahead of time and particularly for higher-level positions, will sitdown and make sure each person understands who’s focusing on what aspects ofthe candidates, such as their credentials,attributes and personality.
They then have about a 45-minutedebriefing session after the candidate hasleft to gather the positive and the negativesof the applicant.
“You don’t want to make it too long,” he says.“It’s an information-gathering exercise for themost part. To some extent, it’s a discussion,but largely information gathering. You can usesome tricks like putting up a big spreadsheeton the projector and then just typing in thecomments as you hear them on the plus sideand the minus side maybe. That tends to prevent too much repetition in the course of theexercise and allows everybody to see what isbeing said. Sometimes people will chime in; sometimes people will disagree.”
In the end, it always comes down to thehiring manager’s decision.
“They’re the person who’s responsiblefor making the final decision,” he says.“Everybody else provides input and the hiring manager goes away and makes the call.”
Though it can be hard for Byford if thechoice is not what he wanted, he simplywalks away and has faith in his managers.
“It’s one of the things you can’t afford to doin this position is to second-guess or to over-worry about decisions,” he says. “It’s thetrust thing again.”
You have to trust in the systems you’vecreated and the people that work with you.
“Will people be 100 percent right? No. Ismy hiring record over the course of mycareer 100 percent right? No,” he says.
“But you have to have faith that if peopledo occasionally goof, they’ll figure it out andthey’ll fix it, and also, sometimes that they’llbe perfectly right. A candidate that I perhapswasn’t particularly enthused about will turnout to be one of our star employees.”
HOW TO REACH: Vocollect Inc., (412) 829-8145 or www.vocollect.com
